The next time we see Macbeth he is walking down a track with Banquo when they see the three witches. At first, the two heroes don’t believe that there in front of them are three witches. However, the witches begin to talk, mainly to Macbeth. However, when the witches proclaim three prophecies and the first comes true Macbeth becomes aware, of the fact that he could be about to be made king as that was the grandest prophecy of the three. Macbeth shows this by saying “if chance may have me king, why, chance may crown me without a stir.” Although at this point Macbeth has no plans to kill the king but I think the audience would be getting suspicious of Macbeth because the seed of want has been planted in his mind and so you begin to wonder if he would do it.
The next scene doesn’t involve Macbeth as such but his wife she is seen reading a letter from her husband. As she is the closest person to Macbeth so she knows that no matter what is said to him, he would not be able to kill the king. However she knows that only maybe one person could convince him to maybe kill the king; herself. She shows the audience this by saying his nature “is too full of the milk of human kindness.” This still doesn’t make the audience dislike Macbeth they will just dislike Lady Macbeth.
The next scene is where the audience begin to dislike Macbeth and his wife because they begin to set the tone for the rest of the play. At the beginning of the scene Macbeth is seen to be having a debate with his conscience over whether to kill the king. This is because killing the king is the worst crime you could commit and for somebody who has served him and been praised by him, the idea would be abhorrent. The second reason would be that the scene is set in Macbeths own home and in this time it is still considered that a guest is a very important person when visiting, whether it was the king or not so Macbeth has to battle with that. What turns the audience against Macbeth is that he has been influenced by his wife, While suggests he is indecisive in making his own decisions. This is shown in the play when Lady Macbeth discovers him debating killing the king she says to him. “Wouldst thou have that which thou esteem'st the ornament of life, and live a coward in thine own esteem.”
After Macbeth has killed the king he begins a decent into self destruction. Just after he has killed the king, the audience still have the smallest amount of sympathy for him because the more people saw the king the more they disliked him and so this makes people a bit glad that he is dead. One reason for this is because he wasn’t on the battlefield. In any other play the king is always seen to be at the front of his army showing that when something threatens his people he is there ready to protect them not some soldier. Therefore some people would be glad that he is dead but they would still dislike Macbeth because he has committed high treason.
The next scene shows a sever change to Macbeths character. Instead of being somebody who doesn’t want to commit any crime, now after having broken the first barrier by killing the king, he shows no qualms in killing anyone. As the witches had proclaimed three prophecies and two had come true and Macbeth had now been made king. The third prophecy was that Banquo’s children would be king and so Macbeth had to try and stop this from coming true, so he sends to thugs to go and kill Banquo and his family. At this point in the play Macbeth is becoming hated by the audience with little respect from them because after all from what we have seen from the earlier part of the play Macbeth and Banquo were quite close friends but now he has killed him.
After Banquo has been killed, Macbeth is hols a banquet. When Macbeth is in the banquet he is fine, however, shortly into it when he goes to go and talk to someone when he returns there are no spaces at the main table because his chair has been taken by the dead Banquo. Macbeth when he sees this is horrified and begins to rant about Banquo. However before Macbeth can say to much his wife steps in and makes him stop.
Next Macbeth meets the three witches again and one again they proclaim three prophecies, chief of which was to beware of Mucduff. So because he has no problems with killing people so he sends people to kill Mucduff and his family. However when they arrive at his house, Mucduff is nowhere to be seen so they just kill his family. When Mucduff finds this out he is determined to find the killer. The audience now find Macbeth to be a monster
Soon Macbeth has lost control of the kingdom and he knows that his time is short. The audience are at rock bottom in their opinion of Macbeth and believe that he has a lot coming to him and so they would like to see Macbeth killed or at least hurt because of what he has done to the people who he supposedly cares about and especially his closest friend. At the best point in this scene Mucduff and the army arrive to arrest Macbeth and so with what little pride Macbeth has and knowing that he is going to die. He fights and this redeems a little respect from the audience. He has seen that he has done wrong and so they know that he isn’t all bad natured and this makes them sympathetic in a way because he is going to die.
